


you're a flashback on a film reel (on the one screen in my town)

by hoteldestiel



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26520478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoteldestiel/pseuds/hoteldestiel
Summary: There's a wedding arch in the room where Quentin and Eliot get injected with a half-century of emotion. There are a thousand small reminders that a REAL wedding was supposed to take place in the castle, and a thousand more reminders that the fate of magic rests on their shoulders. Is 50 years of proof of concept enough to overcome a magic-less world, four missing keys, and a man who's heart has been broken one too many times? For the first time, in the face of overwhelming odds, Quentin wants to find out.
Relationships: Arielle/Quentin Coldwater, Arielle/Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh, Josh Hoberman/Julia Wicker, Margo Hanson/Alice Quinn, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24





	you're a flashback on a film reel (on the one screen in my town)

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a oneshot. Apparently I am wholly incapable of writing oneshots. Inspired by a piece I commissioned from @wow__then on twitter - Queliot using the wedding arch from Margo's botched royal wedding. It's morphed into a little bit of a mid-s3 AU. I'm excited to show you where these dumb boys go next! 
> 
> P.S. See the gorgeous illustration here: https://twitter.com/wow__then/status/1269434779771928579?s=20

Eliot leaned back on his palms, the reassuring realness of the cool tile against his skin connecting him to reality. To something other than - that. The mosaic. The other world and other life that apparently, he’d never lived. Apparently, except that he could feel the remnants of it running underneath his skin, an invisible lifetime etched there with an unshakeable permanence. It was a sense of permanence that almost convinced him that if he reached up to the left side of his hairline now, he would feel the small, thin scar that he got diving after Teddy when he’d gone from playfully splashing in the river to underwater, tiny fingers flailing and disappearing as an undercurrent tugged him away. It was as convincing a permanence as the memory of the icy chill of the water against his skin and in his lungs as he hoisted a wailing Teddy into the arms of a frantic, terrified Quentin. It _felt_ real. But it wasn’t, apparently. 

Apparently, _none of it_ was real, now. Because Margo had “saved” them. It wasn’t real. He could believe that, mostly, except for the small fact that when he let his head fall back and opened his eyes to see the still-vibrant foliage of the wedding arch and could smell the honeysuckle on the breeze in the field the day Quentin and Arielle got married. 

The honeysuckle grew with reckless abandon at the edges of their little plot of land despite their best efforts at quieting it their first couple of summers. Eliot had always rather liked the sweetness of the scent, but Quentin’s allergies had caused him enough hell that Eliot agreed to at least try and contain it. But even by magical means, it always grew back. Eventually, Quentin either got used to it or managed to enchant his allergies away, Eliot never asked which it was. By the time Q proposed to Arielle, the honeysuckle was joined with the scent of a handful of other wildflowers that they coexisted with - setting a stunning, colorful backdrop for the impending nuptials. 

Eliot could still see the uneasy way Quentin fumbled with his tie until he finally stepped in, swatting stumbling fingers away from the fine, dark fabric they’d managed to talk the traveling peddler out of a few weeks prior.

“Q, you’re going to wreck it. Let me -“ he’d said, putting his nimble fingers to the familiar, if slowly fading, work of creating a perfect Windsor knot in the tie he and Arielle had made together. 

“Oh, um, thanks,” Quentin had replied, a slight flush on his cheeks as he tucked his still-loose hair behind his ears. The years they’d spent here already had familiarized Eliot with Quentin’s inability to keep his hands still in almost all circumstances, but no amount of time or exposure made each nerve-filled movement any less endearing to him. 

“I know we haven’t exactly been sporting formalwear lately, but you should know better than to attempt a Windsor when you have me at your disposal,” Eliot said, glossing over the thanks. A few deft folds of the fabric and a slight tug later, the tie was impeccable and in place. Eliot brushed his hands over Q’s shoulders, tiny pieces of dust and loose fabric fuzz stirring up to dance playfully around in the sunlight streaming through the cottage’s window. “There. Perfect.”

Quentin turned and looked in the full-length mirror, tilting his head sideways at his own reflection. “Wow, I’m - this is really happening, huh?” 

“Sure is,” Eliot nodded, stepping up behind him and ignoring the twist in his heart at seeing himself reflected next to a Groom-prepped Quentin. “Unless you’re trying to pull a Runaway Bride here...”

The way Quentin twisted to look at him, for real, not through the glass of the mirror, his hair brushing against Eliot’s neck, made his skin feel like it was on fire. 

“El...” Q said, and Eliot could hear the rejection in his tone, the apology he couldn’t bear to hear so he stepped back, clearing his throat and shaking his head, sliding a black hair tie off of his own wrist and offering it to Quentin. 

“Pull that hair back, would you? Ari isn’t going to marry he-man cave-dweller Quentin. Speaking of Ari, I’m going to go check on the blushing bride.” 

He’d excused himself before Quentin could say another word. 

“I know it sounds dumb, but--” 

Quentin’s voice pulled him back to the throne room. Back to the arch looming above their heads, the cool tile beneath his hands. He leaned forward, reaching for the discarded peach, and felt the reassuring weight of it in his hand. Margo saved their lives, but hadn’t they lived them? Right to the very end? He remembered it all, and Quentin seemed to remember, too. So how was that not real? How could it be anything but? It was, as far as he could remember and as deep as he cared to dig, the most real thing he’d ever experienced. 

He glanced at Quentin, that nervous edge to his voice so familiar it pulled a series of strings that made his heart dance like a puppet contorted by its master. He couldn’t tell if it was familiar from the few years they’d known each other here, or if it was an echo of the literally countless times he’d heard it in a thousand different scenarios there. Either option shallowed his breath, slammed his heart against his ribcage. 

“Us, I mean, we, think about it, we. We work.” 

Eliot couldn’t meet Quentin’s eyes for fear of what he would find there. There was a nasty voice, one Eliot never could quite silence, telling him Quentin was delirious, making a mistake, throwing mountains of proof in his face why this was a terrible idea. Idyllic Quentin thinking idyllic thoughts, letting himself get caught up in the rapid injection of a lifetime together, not thinking clearly, not feeling accurately, not taking into account the clusterfuck of a world they actually lived in. 

“We know it cuz we lived it. I mean, who gets that kind of proof of concept?” 

Quentin kept going and Eliot’s heart betrayed him, floating in his chest, inflating with that wretched thing called hope. They’d had 50 years together, hadn’t they? 50 crazy, beautiful, unexpected years. But, the nasty voice was quick to remind him, they only had those years after Arielle died. Only after he’d chosen someone else. Because he had, hadn’t he? When the options were so incredibly limited, Quentin had chosen someone else. In a world without Alice Quinn, brainiac girl wonder, to compete with, Quentin still hadn’t chosen him first. Right? 

“Q....” Eliot retorted. 

The rest of his denial was right there, ready to close the door on happiness for good. Ready to head off the hurt before it hit him like, well. Like he’d hit Logan with that fucking bus. 

“We were just injected with a.... half-century of emotion so I get that... maybe you’re not thinking clearly.” He started to say it, to lay the bricks that would finally seal off his heart. 

Every word he spoke, his body fought back. It was like pulling teeth or trying to learn Arabic all over again. Every syllable was a tremendous effort, almost overshadowed by the screaming need that echoed in his head. But he had a million memories in his mind that were untarnished. They glowed golden with something untouchable by the million and one dark, world-ending things that chased them here. He was giving Quentin an out. 

_Just take it, Quentin. Take it, save us both._

“No, I’m just saying - what if we....gave it a shot?” 

Eliot’s heart flipped, his arteries tying themselves in complex knots. His brain stuttered out a thousand excuses -- some valid, some… not so much -- and his heart stopped them all before they passed his lips. 

“I mean, would it really be that crazy?” Quentin pressed on. 

Eliot was used to how insistent Quentin could be. The way he built momentum in Eliot’s silence took him back to the cottage, to their first big argument after Arielle’s death. They stood like two old-timey cowboys standing off outside a saloon, but with much less space between them, the traditional pistols exchanged for sharp tongues. 

They’d sent 9-year-old Teddy to bed, though neither of them entertained the illusion that a narrow hall in a tiny cottage would keep the boy from hearing their disagreement. For a while, they’d kept it to heated whispers, determined to solve this the Fillorian way, but after a short while and several almost-raised voices later, Quentin had angrily raised his hands, tutting out a spell that, for lack of a more impressive explanation, amounted to a cone of silence. The minute he’d finished, Quentin burst like he’d been holding it in for a decade. 

“Are you fucking KIDDING ME, ELIOT?! You can’t just - let the kid run off into the woods like there aren’t a hundred things we know about and like, TWO HUNDRED THINGS WE DON’T that could kill him!” 

Eliot recoiled on instinct, like Quentin had reached across the space between him and shoved. He'd intentionally taken a back seat with Teddy after Arielle’s death, filling the Uncle Eliot role proudly and without hesitation. He might not have known much about fatherly love, but he knew the way his heart swelled when that little boy smiled at him was no ordinary affection. Still, Teddy wasn't his son, really, and Quentin had enough complexity on his plate to deal with. But slowly, over the years that followed, Eliot got more involved in the childrearing decisions. Sometimes, Quentin invited his opinion expressly, sometimes Eliot just couldn't keep his nose out of it. 

By the time Teddy was 8, they were practically co-parenting, though neither of them would say as much. 50 years, they’d had, and they’d still wasted so much time. 

"He's a KID, Q, we have to let him make some mistakes," Eliot retorted after recovering from the initial shock of Quentin shouting

"Mistakes, sure. But mistakes are like, I don't know, tipping his glass of milk over, or scribbling with washable crayon on one of the tiles. Running off into the woods and getting ahead of you like that is a freaking death sentence. This is Fillory, El. Not a carefully designed greenspace in upstate New York." 

"Wow, thanks, Q. I hadn't noticed all the times we've bought mead from the TALKING BEAR in the village. Here I was thinking we were just back in Indiana." 

"Look, I get that you grew up on a farm and for whatever reason, you think that makes you an expert of the Wild Wild West or whatever, but I'm serious. This is Teddy. We're not doing that again." 

"Quentin, he's _fine._ He had a blast, he climbed a tree, he tripped over a few stones and cut his knee on a thorny bush. He watched lizards slither across the path and we maybe caught a glimpse of a questing creature in the distance. Or a wood nymph, I’m still not entirely sure. But he was safe and he is _fine_. He's almost 10, we can't keep treating him like he's a toddler." 

"I'm not arguing about this with you," Quentin said, crossing his arms firmly across his chest, "He could have gotten killed out there." 

"Q, will you just -" 

"Eliot, you're not his FATHER, I AM." 

Eliot's mouth fell open, but there wasn't a syllable to be found. No pop culture quip came tumbling out to quickly build a wall of self-defense. Instead, he stood there, feeling like Q had just fired a magic missile directly at his chest and he'd somehow taken it, full force, without being thrown across the room. 

_This._ This was why he had hesitated to get so involved in raising Teddy. This fear, that he'd somehow fooled himself into thinking might not be real. It was the whole reason he'd brushed it off after their first kiss, the reason he'd encouraged Quentin with Arielle when what he'd really wanted to do was throw her little basket of peaches and plums across the fucking lawn and tell her to back away from his man. But clearly, he'd been right. He had no claim here. 

"Right," he managed against the invisible python that was tightening around his throat. 

He turned and in a few long, quick strides pushed through the door and out into the chill of the night air. 

"El...." 

He wanted to turn back, wanted to see if maybe the fierce, fatherly fire in Quentin's eyes had quieted enough to leave room for the glow of his own embers. But he couldn't. He kept walking, past the cleared mosaic and the piles of clay tiles in every color of the rainbow, holding some secret they still hadn't cracked. He walked past the lines of clothing drying in the wind and past the daybed piled high with blankets and pillows that Teddy so often made a fort out of this time of year when the temperatures were cooler and something like Earth's fall took over. He walked past the tree line into the woods he'd just been admonished for bringing Teddy into. 

He knew Quentin wouldn't follow, so he wound his way through the trees on the little dirt trail, focusing on the pattern of his worn-down Fillorian cloth shoes left underneath him with every step to ease the ache in his chest, the sharp, terrible confirmation threatening to break him in two. 

_Eliot, you're not his father._

It shouldn't hurt in the hollowed out way that it did, like with each of those words Quentin had taken a jagged-edged scoop and dug around in his chest cavity with it until there was nothing left. Quentin was right, after all. He _wasn't_ Teddy's father. He'd never wanted kids, never had any desire to re-up on the cycle of childhood trauma he was sure he would impart on a small human. He didn't want children, but he wanted Teddy. 

Eventually, he followed the trail to where it opened up out of the woods again, to where a small stream poured into a large lake. The moonlight reflected silvery-white on the dark surface of the water and Eliot walked over to an outcropping of slate-colored rocks along the shore, scrambling up onto the nearest and pulling his knees clumsily up to his chest. Only when he was still, when the world around him went quiet except for the soft lapping of the water against the pebble-filled shore, did he let the pain scratch its way out of his throat, puncturing the soft quiet of the night with a single, half-ragged sob. He heard its echo around him and squared his shoulders, though they shook silently, tears sliding down his cheeks, he let the quiet take over his surroundings again. 

After he caught his breath, angrily wiping each side of his face with the back of his hand, he looked to his right. They'd been only a few hundred feet away from this spot when Teddy scraped himself bad enough to want to turn back. Eliot had planned to show Teddy today, and bring Quentin tomorrow. Much of Fillory as they had known it before was different from the land they'd walked into from the clock. But this - this hadn't changed. He recognized it the minute he'd stumbled onto it a week or so earlier on his way back from the village. He wasn't sure how exactly deja vu worked when the feeling stemmed from something that, technically, hadn't happened yet, but he'd stepped onto the beach and could see himself kneeling near the shore after Quentin's adamant demands that if they were going to become royalty, they were going to do it right. 

It was one of those moments, he thought with a dulling ache in his chest, one of those chances put in front of him, with Quentin's shining eyes and the soft, half-smile that showed he meant what he said, that he didn't take. Quentin had placed the crown on him that day, proclaiming him High King Eliot The Spectacular with a tenderness Eliot was certain he'd never been shown from a man who wasn’t possessed with a bloodthirsty, moth-faced beast. He remembered wrapping his fingers around Quentin's forearms, thinking on the way up about how easy it would have been to pull Quentin into him, to use the momentum to release one of Quentin's arms and wrap it around his waist, to kiss him with the same tenderness he was offering. To kiss him softly, sweetly, lingering like he wanted to. Not drunkenly, clumsily, hungrily like he had that night he ruined everything. 

He kicked the toe of his cloth boot at a pebble, watching as it skittered a short distance before settling into a new pile of stones. Why couldn't he hold the things he wanted without breaking them? 

That night, by the time he wandered back to the cottage from the coronation beach, there was only a faint, warm glow flickering gently in the windows. Quentin was asleep on an overstuffed chair in the living room, his head cocked to the side in a way that he was definitely going to complain about when the sun rose and Teddy awoke. Eliot slid the open book out from under Quentin's hands on his chest, slow and careful so as not to wake him, and set it on the small wicker table beside the chair. He blew out the remaining oil lamp and made his way through the familiar dark of the cottage into Teddy's room, crawling into the bed and curling gently around him. 

"Why were you and daddy yelling?" Teddy's little voice caught him off guard, his hand stuttering just a little on its path to smoothing over Teddy's hair. 

"Daddy just worries about you, kiddo, you know how he is," Eliot said after a moment. 

Teddy wriggled beside him, wrapping himself up in the blankets like a cocoon until he was facing Eliot, miniaturized versions of Quentin's eyes looking up at him with that familiar tenderness. Eliot's heart squeezed in his chest. 

"But that's silly," Teddy insisted. 

"I don't know. I can see where he's coming from. No one wants to see you get hurt if you don't need to," Eliot said, tucking the blanket further around Teddy's sides and unable to stop a smile from tugging at the corners of his lips at the ensuing giggle. 

"Yeah, but like, I was with _you._ He should know by now that you wouldn't let anything hurt me."

Eliot cared for Teddy. He'd tossed him in the air and reveled in his laughter from the time he was old enough to laugh at all. He'd cooked him dinner and helped him sew patches in his clothes. He'd pranked Arielle and Quentin with him. He'd built Teddy's version of the mosaic at least a hundred times. He made up countless bedtime stories and trudged through the forest in search of herbs that would help concoct a salve once when he was three with an unexpected and quickly worsening rash. Neither Arielle nor Quentin would leave his side, and Eliot had jumped into action without a second thought. 

He did all of those things without seeking attention, or glory. He tried, so hard, to never step on Arielle's toes or to overshadow her memory in the years since her passing. For a man who was infamous for taking up the most space at the party and demanding the spotlight, he worked hard at fading into the background with Teddy. A constant presence, a steady force, but never the hero of the story. And here Teddy was, in his less than a decade's worth of knowledge of the world, telling Eliot he saw right through that shit. 

Teddy stripped him bare that night, leaving Eliot with no air in his lungs, just the ability to lean forward and press a soft kiss to his forehead, offer a weak "Yeah, you've got me there, Teddy," and manage to quell the unbelievable swelling of his heart until Teddy fell back asleep, his head buried in Eliot's chest. 

It was that same, nearly breathless feeling that hit him now, that same swell in his chest, the prickling at the back of his eyes. It was easier to push it away without the soft, lavender-scented head of a seven-year-old nestled into his chest. 

“Q, come on - “ Eliot started, the certainty in his voice only barely wavering. 

“Why the _fuck not?”_ Q challenged. 

For as gloom-and-doom as Quentin could be, Eliot was never all that surprised when a streak of optimism shined through. He had learned to admire it over the course of their lifetime, and he could feel the shadows of that admiration now. But the mosaic was different, and Quentin had to know that. He had to know that this fucked-for-all world they were back in, where the fate of magic somehow rested in their chaotic, wholly incapable hands was not a world where they could thrive for generations and enjoy every - or, hell, _any -_ minute of it. 

_Why the fuck not?_ was a beautiful question, in theory. But there were a thousand reasons why the fuck not. Eliot could summon them at the snap of a finger. He could list the seven hundred and thirty-eight ways in which he wasn’t enough for Quentin, the two thousand, three hundred and seventy-two ways in which the WORLD could go sideways, not to mention the five hundred and forty-nine additional ways things could go sideways between the two of them. 50 years was a beautiful thought - a beautiful dream, Eliot reminded himself - but that was all it was. The world they’d come back to was not the one they had lived in. There were too many big, dark, borderline-apocalyptic things staring them in the face. 

Eliot wiped sweaty palms on his pants and pressed his hands against his thighs, using the momentum to stand. He shook his head, running a hand through his hair. 

“Because, Q,” Eliot said, only after he wrenched his eyes away from the note of hope shining in Quentin’s eyes. “Because this isn’t that. That didn’t - it didn’t even happen, really, you know? There’s - the quest, and the fate of all magic, and - Alice.” 

Pulling the Alice card was a low blow, Eliot knew. But the effect was exactly what Eliot thought it would be. Quentin’s mouth snapped shut, silencing whatever objection he’d been preparing, then hung open slightly, aghast. 

“Oh,” Quentin said, fiddling with the peach in his hand.

If Quentin said anything else, it was lost to the rush of adrenaline in Eliot’s ears and the sound of his own footsteps carrying him out of the throne room and away from where the man he loved, despite and because of it all, sat framed perfectly under a wedding arch in full bloom.


End file.
